@gawattia.bsky.social had this outcome dialed in www.liberalcurrents.com/return-of-th...

“The problems with the racist status quo were evident to see, and far beyond what the good-willed abolitionists could offer.” www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...

Read Anna O’Law’s “Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship” at least three times now for an upcoming review for @liberalcurrents.com and what I admire most about her writing is her even-handedness.

This is my lane. I went through the 194 Trump v Barbara opinion from yesterday section by section, noting what they got right about US migration and citizenship history, and what the dissents get wrong. Please share if you think it is helpful to others.

Have the same sentiment about politics in general, including the rulings of the court. Passions, factions, and all of that…

This is all very ugly, but serious questions need to be asked about how society arrived here. As important is to ask the question of how one may have contributed, or is contributing, to this kind of politics. How does this illiberal culture end?

Unfortunately, this is a mischaracterisation of the criticism. See, an inclination to glorify in the death of others, or to fail to condemn the butchering of innocents, is not a ‘moral oversight’ or mere ‘error in judgment’. It suggests at the very least that your moral compass is broken.

Two sensible ideas can be held at the same time: (1) the murder of innocent civilians is abhorrent, and (2) this butchering act of terrorism will in all likelihood lead to more needless suffering. This is a reasonable view.

It should be pointed that there is no denial here that incivility is bad. The point here seems to be that the “tone and incivility” of “dirtbags” does not rise to the level of harm caused by the incivility of the government. + an unstated suggestion that liberals should focus more on the latter?

Truly devastating.

1. It’s odd to believe you can be truly empathetic without some adherence to politeness. Political empathy presupposes politeness: you must be willing to listen attentively, hear clearly, and respond carefully to the suffering to form clear political action. All this requires politesse, madame!

One can deplore current immigration stances, and the undignified stigmatisation that has come with that, and still think that one has no warrant to conclude that this specific kind of reasoning is either implicitly or explicitly endorsed by Justice Barrett in her judicial capacity.

Conceptually, the “central virtues of liberalism descend directly from the cardinal virtues of early Christianity: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice.” Liberalism, in other words, is a call to self-government. If that’s true, then it is NOT the case that everything goes. Watch the means!

1. Your ‘views’ are supposed to flow from, and be informed by, your ‘virtues’. 2. This isn’t about ‘optics’. You build virtues because you want to be a certain kind of person that can perform certain moral actions when no one is looking.

People think liberalism is primarily about having certain ‘views’ when it is first and foremost about having certain ‘virtues’. To be ‘liberal’ in the way the pre-moderns understood it was about being generous. Those who neglect virtue in the pursuit of ends, even good ones, proceed illiberally.

Liberalism is Christianity naturalised. The virtues that sustain a liberal order include charity, but because people don’t understand the intellectual tradition and are alienated from its moral core, they act in ways which suggest they never got a grasp of what liberalism is about.

Currently reading and re-reading a number of newly published books on slavery. Like the history of Nazism and the Holocaust, every time I think I reached the bottom of this unspeakable pit of depravity, some new atrocity opens up a more horrid descent into the hell that was chattel slavery.

“Démocratie! Don’t you notice that these are the waters of the Deluge! Don’t you see them advance by a slow and irresistible effort? Seek to build the holy guardian ark which must carry the human species on this boundless ocean.” Get your copy of The Reconstruction Papers @liberalcurrents.com

A friendly reminder 1. You don’t need to insult someone to get a point across. 2. Propositions have a truth value which can be contested, affirmed or denied, quite independently of who is making the claim, which group is known to make that claim, and their social standing. Please and thank you.

The ToC for The Reconstruction Papers. Read more about it here and pre-order a print copy now www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...

Here is the data visualisation for my new @liberalcurrents.com article “The Return of The White Man’s Burden,” a review of William Easterly’s “Violent Saviors.” www.liberalcurrents.com/return-of-th...

This essay by @gawattia.bsky.social is close to my heart. A review of the great liberal Bill Easterly's Violent Saviors, Attia includes an extended discussion of Adam Smith's anti-imperialism and concludes with a dash of anti-imperialism from Ludwig von Mises that Mises haters should read.

The idea that ‘wastage’ can be a morally justifiable reason to take over valuable resources, either as rightful conqueror or self-appointed steward, has been one of the most powerful drivers of illiberal deeds in human history. Read my review of William Easterly’s ‘Violent Saviors’ here.

Today @gawattia.bsky.social joins @caitlinmoriah.bsky.social, @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com, @trentrichardnelson.bsky.social, and @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com to discuss liberal internationalism, history, and more on The Editors' Chat www.liberalcurrents.com/critical-thi...

Listen to @gawattia.bsky.social talking about his article on the universal treatment of death as sacred, and Trump’s profaning of it youtube.com/shorts/5whiM...

“Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jests can be made.” E.A.Poe My new piece for @liberalcurrents.com is a short meditation of the role of the sacred in politics. www.liberalcurrents.com/remembering-...

The paranoid style has rightly been sanctioned, but to the detriment of other more healthful forms of public neurotism. @liberalcurrents.com I argue that perhaps what the country needs is for liberal politics to grow more paranoid in style, not less. www.liberalcurrents.com/too-great-fo...

Listen to @gawattia.bsky.social talk about what history can teach us about the war in Iran youtube.com/shorts/fWImX...

“There are certain physical facts—bodies of water, deposits of gas—that technology was never going to transcend, except in the ultra-long term.’’ says Janan Ganesh. Missing from his list is history. My new piece for @liberalcurrents.com looks back at 1982. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-war-that...

New @liberalcurrents.com: “The American psyche understandably recoils at the sight of armed men in masks…masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan…introducing a layer of secrecy at a time of low government trust.” www.liberalcurrents.com/call-you-thi...

Millions of people in the American South were subjected to what the French call ‘‘une vie sanglante’’(a bloody life). As I explain in this @liberalcurrents.com article, the world should never forget that. Memory of past cruelties builds a liberal conscience www.liberalcurrents.com/the-liberal-...

Readings this week...

"Liberalism ... is able to find unity in diversity by balancing the need for enduring order on one hand and restless dynamism on the other." A reformed US political system, with robust immigration from Africa, can counter the demographic bomb of low fertility that is dragging down China and Europe.

good piece from guillaume about some relatively basic demographic facts that are more or less baked into the cake at this point. as the saying goes, "all the new workers of 2046 have already been born." guess where that's happening?

“Liberals do not believe that the security and prosperity of nations must depend on complete uniformity of thought, manners, and coloration.” Indeed, “fierce disputation and colorful variety are often a sign of good health, not terminal decline.” www.liberalcurrents.com/future-is-af...

And today, @gawattia.bsky.social argues against Megyn Kelly's pernicious idea that free speech is something exercised quietly and peacefully from the safety of your home, when instead "tense, heated, and socially disruptive speech" is necessary for the health of the body politic

On Sept. 1, 2025 an internal memo by the Portland police described the anti-ICE protests there as showing “little to no energy.” As I argue in this @liberalcurrents.com article, liberal philosophers like W.Humboldt prized the ‘high energy’ of vigorous criticism. www.liberalcurrents.com/s/

“When such critics and editors disappear, every part of the literary ecosystem suffers.” Indeed, reviewing books is a humane enterprise: it helps us understand ourselves and others better. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

A small selection from the past week and a half of reading, with special emphasis on conservatism and its political embodiment in the U.S. Some people think books don’t matter, but without them we are cut off from the past, misunderstand the present, and are unprepared to face the future.

Readings this week…

People make fun of this site being all 37 year olds, but apparently my fellow 37 year olds are on the front lines getting shot